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Canadian singer-songwriter Rae Spoon identifies not as a woman, not as a man, but somewhere in between.

To Spoon, and what appears to be an increasingly vocal minority, gender is “more like a whole galaxy.”

Which introduces the problem of pronouns. Spoon says “he” has expectations of maleness, “she” of femaleness. So Spoon, 32, likes to be referred to as “they.” Others prefer “ze” and “hir” (pronounced hear) or “per” (short for person).

The last decade has seen the growth of the transgender community. The community includes transsexuals — those who aspire to be the opposite gender of the one they were assigned at birth, and perhaps have surgery and/or hormone treatment to achieve that end. But not all transgender people want to be male or female.

Australia and New Zealand now allow citizens to be neither male nor female on their passports. Canada and the U.K. are considering a similar move.

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“This might be new for many of us,” concedes Sheila Cavanagh, sexuality studies program co-ordinator at York University, “but there is a reluctance to recognize a whole host of ways of being gendered that isn’t determined by our bodies. We have to challenge our presumptions that to be a man is to necessarily be masculine and to be a woman is to necessarily be feminine.”

Along with the transgender community’s emergence has come a need for legal protection, academic research and greater roles in public life for people who are gender-variant.

It was only last year that a bill known as Toby’s Act, protecting transgender people against discrimination was passed in Ontario. It’s one of only four jurisdictions in Canada that recognize gender identity within the human rights code, says Helen Kennedy, executive director of EGALE (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere) Canada.

At the core of understanding gender variance is differentiating between sex, referring to anatomy, and gender identity, which is our internal sense of being a man or woman, says Cavanagh, author of Queering Bathrooms.

Throughout history there have been people who blurred gender roles. Joan of Arc wore masculine dress and is cited as an example of cross-gender activity, and in First Nations there have been gender non conforming people.

The language around this realm can be confusing. Terms include gender non-conforming, gender-independent, gender-variant and gender-queer, the latter preferred by younger people.

Use of language can be fluid for some gender-variant people. Ivan Coyote, a writer who sometimes works with Spoon, likes to use “they,” but when performing in schools also uses she in self-reference. “I have a fairly masculine presence, so in schools I use “she” because I want to present as wide a spectrum as possible of what a female-assigned person or she person can look like.””

How does Coyote want to be referred for this story? “An artist. Author of 10 books. An activist with youth. A human being. A musician. I’m so many more things than my gender and so much more than someone who doesn’t fit into a gender box.”

Why is it so important? “I’m walking down the street and a guy follows me in his truck for three blocks and pulls over to ask if I am a man or a woman. That happens to me every day — some version of trying to figure out what gender I am, how much respect he has . . . and whether he’s allowed to feel sexual attraction . . . and he does not know how to relate to me until he can understand what gender I am.”

Another question: has Coyote had sex-reassignment surgery? Why ask, Coyote responds. “If you don’t fit into the gender binary, it’s acceptable to ask if you had surgery when they are really asking about your genitals. You wouldn’t ask a woman if she had breast surgery.”

We can try in this story to refer to Spoon as they. It’s not easy. Spoon, who was raised as a girl in an evangelical family in Calgary and now lives in Montreal, came out as transgender 10 years ago and started using the pronoun “he” instead of “she.” But now, they felt there were certain expectations that came with male identity. “Even in the queer community, there would be pressure,” they said. “You are supposed to do male things. As if you are expected to earn your pronoun . . . ”

On the other hand, there were encounters with people who said Spoon was a woman. “ ‘You have hips.’ ‘You don’t have facial hair’ or ‘Your voice is high.’ But not one of those things makes you male or female.”

There were further probing questions: why not have surgery or hormone therapy — which Spoon has not — to look male/masculine. Now Spoon chooses to use “they.”

There was a dust-up last year when they refused to be interviewed by Xtra, Canada’s gay and lesbian newspaper, believing editors wouldn’t use “they” in reference to gender-independent people.

It was a misunderstanding, says managing editor Danny Glenwright. The paper never had a policy about using “they” and had in fact used it in previous articles. “It’s not ideal,” he says. “The English language doesn’t provide the solution.”

“Gender expectation comes out of sexism,” Spoon says. “Coming out using the “they” pronoun is refusing to accept a role. Anyone can refuse it.”

Spoon argues that gender expectations affect everyone, not only those who are gender-independent.

“I’m moving toward an openness. The gender binary fails everyone at some point and this is dumb. In my approach to life, I don’t ‘other’ myself, I see myself as part of something every one is a part of.”

The waitress at the Yorkville cafe looks sharply at Elis Ziegler once, twice and three times, trying to figure it out: is she serving an iced coffee to a man or a woman?

“If people do a double-take, I like that. I know who I am. Externally, people may be confused, but I don’t want it to be clear.”

Ziegler has been addressed as miss, ma’am and sir.

The mother of two sons, Ziegler, who works in a social service agency, spent most of her life as a straight woman, came out as a lesbian in 2004 and to her own surprise came out at work three years ago as trans.

It was during a team exercise, and Ziegler and some colleagues were asked to organize themselves in various ways — years in Canada, language and gender.

As co-workers moved to the right and left, Ziegler stayed put.

“I stayed in the middle.” When the facilitator asked why, Ziegler said, “I don’t identify with either gender.”

With women, Ziegler doesn’t feel “one of them.”

“I’m more comfortable with men, but don’t care if I don’t fit with them either.”

Ziegler adds: “It’s not about choosing, it’s about self-acceptance, and I realized I operated outside of the binary system.”

Raised in Japan — Ziegler's father worked for the U.S. government — Ziegler looked in the mirror around puberty and said, “Does that look like a boy or a girl? I liked what I looked like, in that I wasn’t identified as male or female. And seeing pictures of myself with short hair, not in girly clothing, those are the pictures of me that I liked.”

Now Ziegler, who works in a housing program at East York East Toronto Family Resources, talks of fluidity in gender expression. “Top surgery,” removal of breasts, is planned. It feels wrong to be described as a woman, Ziegler says. “Who am I? I am neither and both. And that’s where I want to be.”

Ziegler's sons are comfortable with the evolution of their mother. “She’s not really changed much,” says Aaron, 22. “She’s still my mom. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

As for language, Ziegler would like to avoid pronouns. Instead of “I sent her an email,” “I sent Elis an email.”

“I’d rather have people confuse me for a guy than to be referred to as she,” Ziegler says.

Using “they” doesn’t sit well with Ziegler and other sticklers for grammar. “You’re referring to an individual in the plural.”

For a while S. Bear Bergman, a writer, educator and storyteller, campaigned for “gender non-specific” pronouns, including ze and hir. Hir could be especially useful, Bergman argues, in applications to avoid awkward constructs such as “when the applicant has completed his/her portfolio . . . ” Why not make it simpler: “hir” portfolio.

But these words haven’t caught on because a marginalized group, “trans and gender-queer people,” are advocating for them, says Bergman. “There’s a part of me that hates the fact that they and them appear to be the words that are going to win and have cultural uptake.”

As for hir, people don’t know how to pronounce it. “I know new things are difficult and require people to stretch themselves, but just because we feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.”

In Hobsons Bay, a city within Melbourne, Australia, Tony Briffa has been mayor and is now a city councillor.

Briffa, too, prefers no pronouns, but is happy if people use male and female pronouns interchangeably.

Born with a genetic intersex condition called partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, Briffa, 43, was raised as a girl — male parts were surgically removed — and lived as a woman until 30 before experimenting with life as a man. Now Briffa feels a combination of male and female. “I am now comfortable being the person nature made me,” Briffa writes in an email.

Working in public life does add pressure, Briffa says. Choosing an identity as male or female made life easier as a politician, “but it’s a lot of work and meant I wasn’t true to my nature.”

Toronto’s Alyx Duffy, meanwhile, has had a privileged life, rich with acceptance and supportive friends, as gender-queer, the term that fits best.

Duffy, who is 28, and works at EGALE Canada, was assumed to be a straight boy, then a gay boy. “For me, gender is really beautiful and fluid. Sometimes I play with signifiers of my gender — clothing and the pitch of my voice.” That may mean wearing a dress. “People aren’t telling me it’s wrong, but they are saying it’s odd. But I am still me.”

Duffy’s hair is long on one side, shaved on the other, a gender-ambivalent look. Duffy tried “them” for a while, but it “didn’t work. Alyx is a safe fallback.

“I take joy in the idea there are limitless possibilities to explore though the medium of gender.”

Most people don’t think about gender identity, says Treanor Mahood-Greer, 56, a transgender social worker living in North Bay. “All my life I’ve thought about gender and the desire to do masculine things. I say masculine because there is no other word for it. I wish our language was like the Innu who have so many words for snow. For me, gender, I’m sorry, we just have men and women, male and female.

Mahood-Greer doesn’t identify as female. “When I say I don’t identify as a woman, people are quick and eager to say, ‘OK, you can be a man’. But I don’t know what it feels like to be a man. I know what it feels like to be me.”

Mahood-Greer advocated for the word “per,” but like most who try new word usage, found it didn’t take.

“For me language is very important. It defines my identity. It’s what’s at your core . . . I think about my core identity because it’s in my face all the time.”

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